ABSTRACT
The history of the region is the factor that has made the Niger Delta immanent in Nigeria’s writing. This chapter presents a survey of the depiction of the Niger Delta's minority condition through selected Nigerian writings by writers of Niger Delta extraction. Rather than present detailed explication of individual literary texts, the survey “locates” each text in the material history that has provoked it. The aim is to reveal the major issues that have made postcolonial Niger Delta immanent in Nigerian writing and to link appropriate history to appropriate texts in a manner that may perhaps help pedagogically should anyone be willing to study the discourse further. The chapter presents the discourse around resource-related politics and conflicts in five sections: "Minority Fears on the Threshold of Independence"; "Boro and the Resistance"; "The Nigerian Civil War"; "Environmental Despoliation, Dispossession and Militancy"; and "Saro-Wiwa and Ogoni Uprising". The five topics are crucial to the Niger Delta’s discourse.
